I am unashamedly romantic.
I’m talking swooning over mix-tapes, rugby players and meet-cutes romantic. And therefore head-over-heels for Mills & Boon.
Amongst a fictionalised biography of the Borgias and a fifty year-old copy of Gone With the Wind that still has a place on my own bookshelf today, lay a Mills & Boon special edition that included Carole Mortimer’s Married by Christmas, Betty Neels’ A Winter Love Story and Jo Leigh’s One Wicked Night.
Of these three, it was Leigh’s One Wicked Night that caught my imagination the most. Emma Roberts was a heroine who had a career, discovered a world of romance and sex, as well as being almost more feisty than her hero could handle.
Unsurprisingly then, these days I am firmly a Modern Tempted girl, though I have a soft spot for regency romances and will try pretty much anything as long as it gives me the HEA (happy ever after) that I crave.
Back in March 2013 I quit my all-consuming day job, took up a post as a PA/administrator, and started my blog. I’ve focused on challenging perceptions of romance, chick lit and women in popular culture and society – no more so than when Busting the Mills & Boon Myth over at For Books’ Sake – encouraging my male friends to become Mills & Boon boys, and attempting to prove to the world at large that there is such a thing as a chick lit feminist.
As someone who’s been firmly entrenched in her Mills & Boon reading ways since the earlier noughties, to be invited to have a monthly guest blog here on the newly revamped Mills & Boon website was very exciting!
Each month myself and the other Ali (the wonderful Ali, marketer extraordinaire) will pick a theme or trope and then I’ll be reviewing a selection of books out that month – across a range of imprints – that engage with this!
This February 14th – the one year anniversary of quitting my job and starting on my blogging journey – the first post of Thrills & Swoon: My Life with Mills & Boon will go live and I hope to see you all there!
Genuinely looking forward to the coming blogs and engaging with you. Follow me on Twitter for more inane ramblings of a chick lit junkie.
